it would be interesting to see
if vmware could come up with a similar map with all of their partners and stuff, I really think it would put the MS map to shame. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense for VMware to build a cloud themselves they would just be competing with their own customers.
MS doesn't have as much of a problem doing it because it seems like these service providers weren't drinking much of the Hyper-V cool aid to begin with.
MS also has a history of screwing their partners over and not having much success at it (Surface, Zune ..)
Not that I believe in either solution for any organization I've ever worked for.
Wake me when we have
* true billing based on what you use not what you provision
* resource pools allowing the customer to provision a pool of resources and provision whatever they want in there (and the billing happens at the resource pool level), bonus points if you can bill similar to how network bandwidth is often billed at 95th percentile.
* dynamically shift workloads around to balance systems, live migrations to eliminate downtime for infrastructure changes that would otherwise be disruptive.
* is high availability - don't want to have to worry about a server failing, storage failing, network failing etc. No built to fail (well you can have built to fail for the customers that like it)
* high level of instrumentation exposed to the customer
* is easy to use (e.g. install an OS with a ISO image), add extra virtual NICs if needed, extra storage.
* provided at a cost that is competitive against in house solutions (the solutions these days are so hysterically tilted in the opposite direction it is amazing people even bother to try to sell them - amazon included -- I guess it goes to show what the typical customer/management out there is like - which is even more depressing that buy into this shit)
Nobody has gotten the last point, some of the Vmware providers can get to a few of the first few points, depending on the type of engagement you get.
I had one of vmware's partners(big partner, even bigger now) a few years ago offer to build some cloud infrastructure at their facility for a DR project I was building out -- my cost was about $650-700k, plus about $10k/mo in hosting(probably over estimated, most of that was for tons of bandwidth that was required). This was for all tier 1 equipment with 4 hour on site support, vmware enterprise plus. I wasn't doing shoestring whitebox shit with free Xen and direct attached storage.
Their cost to me was $3 million plus about $150k/mo in hosting. (they had another plan with no bulk install fee - that was only $272k/mo - they had a $15 setup fee if I remember right too, oh the irony). The stories I have heard since (from some guys spending mega six figures/month in several different clouds) mirror that experience to this day (amazon customers included).
Now I may even be happy if you can get all of the above points and be say 2x or 3x more expensive than in house offering, but when your talking ROI of moving from the cloud to in house being measured in months (perhaps 1 year TOPS - after which the cost saving typically skyrocket as your costs plunge as the bulk capex purchases are complete) nobody is even close to 2x or 3x numbers.
Not holding my breath. At this rate I'd be surprised if it happens within the next decade.